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My dim recollection (obviously wrong) was that while the steel was in a semi molten state, it was squeezed through a mandrell (imagine tooth paste squeezed from the tube)into a ingot form, from there it was hammered into forged ingots later to be machined into anything from rifle barrels to an artillery barrel or whatever.. Sorry, I should have made myself clear.. I wasn't refering to hammer forged barrels as we know them today..
Thanks Jeff and Curl..
That stupid little question was nagging at me..
During forging operations, you want to stay well away from a "Semi-molten" state. Forging is done at a super-critical temperature, high enough to allow maximum ductility, but low enough so that the material will not overheat. The forge operator (forger, forgest...?) must monitor the temperature closely so that the mechanical work imparted to the forging doesn't exceed the allowable temperature. This thermal spike can result in a phenomenon known as "incipient melting, or grain boundary melting". Grain boundary (G-B) melting produces a "hot short" condition; the material can literally fall to pieces. Not good. G-B melting is a fatal flaw that cannot be remedied by any means - the steel must scrapped.
G-B melting was supposedly one of the causes for the notorious brittle steel used in low-numbered Springfield 1903 Actions. There were other causes, to be sure, but lack of adequate temperature control during processing ranks at the top of the list.
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